Another wave hits me, and I growl, shaking my head as I try to push back the primal. “The only guess is... the woman’s back... from Russia.”
Her lips curve up, and she slithers closer, looking down at me. “I like thissss family thing—family isexcellent.”
My arms tighten around her, and I give her a fangy grin. “No complaints here.”
As she crawls back on top of me with hungry eyes, I hold on to her hips tightly until she slides down my cock. The feeling of whatever the hell our primaries are doing in the main house pushes us to fuck hard and fast, rocking and panting until the crest of orgasms crashes into us simultaneously. I bury my fangs in the side of her neck, and she rakes hers over the spot she marked me before, and we drink until our bodies stop moving.
Languid pleasure seeps in as we come down from the quick and intense high of sharing through the bonds, and my eyes slip closed.
Maybe this will all work out fine, and I’m just overthinking it.
The Cat Rekindles A Passion
DELILAH
There are several days until the party, and I’ve started marking off the mornings by the ache in my jaw and the settling weight in my chest. Sometimes I wake up already tense, like I spent the hours of sleep bracing for an impact that never comes. Taurus calls it event anticipation disorder; he says it with half a smirk, but his eyes linger on me when he thinks I’m not looking, and I know he’s keeping his own tally of the days.
We all are, I suppose.
Despite the bright spots, there’s still a visible fracture line running through the house. The ‘unified front’ is more aspiration than reality. Every time we get closer, like one of those puzzles with the magnetic tiles, someone’s polarity flips and we snap apart. There’s two days of peace, followed by a blow-up, then a day and a half of sulking, and the cycle repeats. My brain says that I’m being too analytical, but it’s easier to name the pattern than to admit I’m a part of it.
It doesn’t help that I’m being driven insane by the outside forces who will attend the stupid party as well. On the last call about details I received, Sari’s voice was so shrill it made Taurus wince,and Rafe just curled into himself and waited it out. Usually I deal with her by writing off the crazy, but this time I walked out and trashed the workout room instead. It wasn’t even a conscious decision. One minute I was in the kitchen, and the next I was in the gym, destroying everything I could get my hands on.
Of course, my husband didn’t mind because he does the same shit when he’s mad.
The crew Taurus hired to fix the damage I did to the workout room did outstanding work, considering what they were up against. I went down to inspect the next day, expecting to see some meaningful scorn in their eyes. But the guy in charge, a dark-haired clone from the school named McKuen, just shrugged, said, “I’ve seen worse from classmates,” and rolled with it.
By the morning after, the only evidence of my meltdown was the constellation of scorch marks on the ceiling. They’d dulled the black streaks, but there’s no paint invented that covers magical residue once it’s set in. I watched Taurus run his thumb over the soot, his lips pursed, and for a second I thought he’d have a go at me. Instead, he just scratched the back of his neck and said, “Adds character, Minx.”
My mates only joke about it when they think I can take it. Taurus said we could start charging rent for the ‘rage room’, and for a while, Rafe would walk in and fake a gasp, clutching his chest like he expected to combust. Talia doesn’t joke about it—she just fixes me with that look, the one that says she’s compiling a mental file, with my name on the tab, and every incident a new sheet of paper. She never brings it up directly, though, which is almost worse than if she did.
I don’t know how to explain to them that I have to let this shit out somehow or our internal issues will get much, much worse.
The only person who may not survive until the party is my previous, stubbly mate—the black hole at the center of this little universe causing my destructive bent. It was Sari’s idea to have a ‘quick meet to clarify things’, which is such an insultingly transparent trap that I wanted to both laugh and shove my fist through the drywall. I told Taurus it was a set-up, and he agreed, but he’s a big believer in confrontation-as-therapy.
He asked if I’d be okay, and I said yes, because what else could I say? If I can’t handle her for a short stint while sober and not in bondage gear, I have no idea what the fuck will happen at this damn event.
So I went.
The first warning sign was when Sari texted she was prepping ‘appetizers’. When I walked into the kitchen, she was fussing at the oven, and she had a tray of cookies that I recognized—the same kind Taurus brought on that ill-fated visit that sent me over the edge. She didn’t even try to hide her shitty gambit, holding the tray up and smiling with all her teeth. I grit my teeth and pretended not to notice, wanting to speed the damn thing up, so I didn’t have to be there longer than necessary.
The conversation started tense and only got worse from there. If Sari was trying to play nice, she must have forgotten how, because by the second round of drinks she insisted on, she was needling me about Taurus and Talia with every sentence. I pressed back, at first with a patient, nonjudgmental tone, but soon enough we were both shouting. Unfortunately, Sari pivoted quickly, slinging an old grievance about Alistair and Rhea. Before I knew it, my hands were shaking so badly I had to lockthem together. I finally declared that I was needed at work and got out of there to head home in a blur of fury.
I can’t seem to divest myself of the emotional abuse she lobs at me, no matter what I do.
I locked myself in the workout room as soon as I arrived. I thought being alone would calm me, but once the door shut, the anger filled the space like gas. I punched the speed bag until my knuckles split, then hurled medicine balls at the concrete wall, watching them bounce back in wild arcs. I screamed into a rolled-up mat, but it didn’t help.
When the magic finally kicked in, it was less like an explosion and more like a slow, corrosive burn—my rage eating its way out through my pores, lighting up every nerve. I didn’t even see the new scorch marks happen. I only noticed when the smoldering ceiling tile dropped and grazed my shoulder, leaving a black smudge and the faint scent of burnt hair.
Afterward, I curled up against one of the mats, arms locked around my knees, trying to remember how to breathe. I must have stayed there for hours, because when I came out, the sun was gone and the house was silent, except for Taurus’s heavy footsteps in the upstairs hallway. I found him in his room, sitting on the edge of the bed with a half-empty glass, staring at the wall. He said nothing, but he held out the glass. I sat next to him, and we were quiet for a long time.
We both realized that Sari will never be something we can deal with like adults; she’s going to haunt us forever.
The next two days were spent in the sort of uneasy truce that happens after a forest fire—our emotions charred but not dead, everything brittle and liable to snap. I worked out at weirdhours, and tried not to engage while I was licking my wounds. Sometimes I’d catch a glimpse of Talia or Rafe, but I avoided them as best I could. I think they were scared that in my delicate state, our family could come apart at the seams again.
That night, Taurus and I went to the once again repaired workout room. He tried to get me to talk about it, but I told him I was exhausted and just wanted to run. So we ran, side by side, our feet pounding in sync on the treadmills, the scorched ceiling above us a kind of trophy to our stubbornness.
Luckily, he didn’t even mention how fucked up it was that I asked to run when I hate it with every fiber of my being.
